In the tradition of the participant observer, Cintron, who teaches rhetoric at the University of Iowa, examines a Mexican American community in a small city ""close to"" Chicago. He records and analyzes the daily lives of immigrants, the views and habits of teenagers, the graffiti by which gang members communicate, the problems of small businesspeople and the struggles of a minority with local government and resident majority that dominate the avenues of power. The author emphasizes the ""constellation of images"" by which people relate to life. Although the book contains involving vignettes about individual Mexican Americans, the jargon is sometimes oppressive as Cintron explains and re-explains his ""project in the rhetorics of public culture."" The self-conscious occupation with a theoretical framework obscures material that might otherwise interest an audience seeking to learn more about this group of minority Americans. (Dec.)